


Canceling the Apocalypse

by Cuddle1023



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Character Death, F/M, M/M, Pacific Rim AU, Slow Build, Stiles is a Badass
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-27
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-13 23:03:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1243852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cuddle1023/pseuds/Cuddle1023
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek Hale, Jaegar pilot, is desolate after the loss of his sister and co-pilot. But with the impending apocalypse looming over everyone's head he is dragged back into the world by old friends and one Stiles Stilinski. A man whose connection to him could mean everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue - Derek Hale

When Derek was a kid, whenever he felt small or insignificant, he would look up at the stars. He would think of his mother, somewhere in the woods slipping out of her skin and into the body of a wolf. He would think about how the first time she let him ride on her back he was five and it was well past midnight. He remembered clutching her fur, the long warm length of her back shifting and pulsing underneath his palms. 

She took him out deep into the woods and then circled back home. The forest was alive that night with the footfalls of werewolves and the laughter of children. Laura, all knees and black, black hair, fell asleep on the front porch and Uncle Peter carried her inside to bed. Derek rested on his back in the grass as his mother shed her wolf form. Looking at the stars and imagining what life might be waiting in the distance. 

Turns out he was looking in the wrong direction. 

He was fifteen when the first Kaiju made landfall in San Francisco. He was walking the leaf strewn path in the woods with Cora when he heard. They were walking back from school. Cora kicking up the damp leaves with her yellow sneakers, stirring their moss scent into the air. They didn’t speak. Laura couldn’t keep her words tucked inside for more than a minute but Cora, was different. Her moods melancholic and her thoughts more rationally inclined. 

If she had talked he wouldn’t have been paying attention anyway. His mind kept looping back to Paige. To the sound of her music echoing through the hallways, long and calming and nothing like the erratic rhythm of his life and heartbeat. The thing about being a teenager, and a werewolf, was that life never seemed to settle. Most students smacked through the hallways at breakneck speed, their laughter and words, their perfume and their scents pulsing against him. But Paige moved slowly, her hair a long waterfall down her back, her hands graceful. 

He was so lost he didn’t hear his mother’s footsteps or alert to her scent until she was feet away. Cora halted, foot still swung back on a kick, her face going slack, her brown eyes wide. Their mother’s face was pale, her scent tangled in stress and fear. 

“Mom?” Derek asked. 

“You haven’t heard,” she said. She placed one long fingered hand over her mouth like she was trying to hold in fear and that above anything else scared Derek. “Get inside darlings,” she said, her hands waving behind her. “To the basement, now.”

For three days they rested inside. Fooling themselves into imagining that the wooden walls around them, the gentle breeze through tree branches, and their bravery could protect them. It was hard to believe the monster was real. Derek watched the news coverage, chin in his palm, elbows on his knees and still he couldn’t believe it. The creature was as large as a mountain, it’s body shaking with flesh, it’s appendages sharp and razor thin. 

“It’s the fucking apocalypse, kid,” his Uncle Peter said, frightening Cora and earning him a thorough thrashing from their mother. He returned, eyes drooping, but spirit still intact. “That thing could end it all.”

Three days it took. Three days for tanks, missiles, and fighter planes to break through it’s hard exoskeleton and knock it down. Kaiju the Japanese called it and the name seemed to stick. It fell only hours from Beacon Hills, three cities destroyed in its wake. The research teams descended on the corpse and picked it clean, leaving only the imprint of a monster left in the dirt below. 

The cities, their skyscrapers reduced to rubble and thousands of their citizens dead, slowly healed. A memorial was set up in the San Francisco area, the head of the kaiju on display for the public. In Beacon Hills graffiti popped up of the kaiju and conversations erupted in classrooms. For one month the students learned nothing. Paige, in the music room, changed her music. And Derek would sit out in the hallway listening the sad, mournful melody, waiting for the world to forget. 

By the time the second kaiju hit Manila, six months later, Paige was dead and he was someone very different. And then the third hit and something shifted. People stopped thinking about healing from one attack and began to expect the second. The news filled itself with images of the corpses, of the survivors standing hand in hand over the ruins. Groups began to bud in the Pacific cities. Pieces of a Kaiju corpse became trophies, and in some cases delicacies. Foreign policies and grudges that had last years were buried in weeks. 

Derek heard the rumors of monsters being created to fight the kaiju from Laura. He was in his room, trying to enjoy some respite from the family when she barged in. She was supposed to be in college that fall but she’d dropped out in the light of everything. No one blamed her. 

“Hey grumpy,” she said, falling on his bed and placing her laptop on her stomach. “Want to hear some kaiju related rumors?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She tilted the screen into his view and smirked. “Giant robots, kiddo. The government is making them right now in these huge factories, and training people to pilot them. Isn’t that-“

“Can’t you bother Cora with this?” he asked. “She’s more tech savvy.”

“She’s all mental,” Laura said rolling her green eyes. They’d inherited their mother’s green eyes, and one day, a long time from now Laura’s eyes would flash Alpha red like their mother’s. Laura looked at him with a frown. “I thought my brother was different.”

“Laura, I’ve-“

“Paige,” she said, sitting up. “I know, Derek. But you have to forgive yourself. You’re a kid. You make decisions, you make mistakes, you live with them and then you move on. Otherwise you’re just stuck.”

She placed the laptop aside and punched his arm, playfully. “Think you can take me in a tussle, baby brother? I’ll be a good big sis and play the Kaiju if you want.”

By the time the government had come clean with their Jaegar program Derek was getting ready to graduate High school. Laura, still living in Beacon Hills, was a waitress and Kaiju were a part of every child’s nightmare. Derek watched the news, read the reports. He was fascinated by the scale and beauty of the machines the country had created. Over dinner every night Cora would wax poetic about the engineering of the Jaegar and the technology and neuroscience behind piloting it. 

Derek didn’t pay much attention at first to the mechanics of piloting the Jaegar. He just liked to look at them. He began having dreams of being inside them, strapped into one, connected to one. The new world they were living in felt tenuous and anxious ridden, but his dreams had a tingle of excitement and innocent awe. And a tingly of a power he hadn’t known he yearned for. 

It was Laura who found the government website. Laura who heard about drift compatability. And Laura who first knew that they could be Jaegar pilots.


	2. Knifehead- Derek Hale

ALASKA - 2020

Derek was woken from a thin, dreamless sleep by shrill alarms. He startled for a second, his sensitive eyes adjusting to the synthetic brightness of the room, than jumped out of bed. The cold air in their metal, militaristic room slapped against his bare chest, but he shook it off. For him at least it hadn’t been hard adjusting to the minimalistic Jaeger program. He’d hung a few pictures in their room, the old, yellowed, fraying, but precious kind, adjusted to the scratchy sheets, and made sure to always have deodorant, shampoo, and soap stocked in the bathroom.

Laura had been different. She’d turned a keen eye to the space. Somehow fitting body wash, shampoo, conditioner, a razor and a healthy packet of makeup into their tiny bathroom. She filled her wall space with similar pictures of Beacon Hills and family but had somehow made the space seem feminine, almost pretty. She never openly complained about their living space. She flashed her red eyes at him, though, when she needed privacy or wanted the top bunk and he would concede. When they were on duty, waiting for movement in the breach, their conversations were short and comforting.

Comfort. That was something he found only with Laura. With the familiar, steady beat of her heart and the closeness of his Alpha. It was something immeasurably important especially after losing their mother, and family, and nearly Cora to the fire.

In the end it didn’t really matter where they lived as long as they were together.

Derek jumped to his feet, pulling his discarded shirt off the floor. His tags jingled, cold against his bare chest. He reached up with two hands and shook Laura’s shoulders. “Wake up, old lady. Movement in the breach; we’re being summoned.”

Laura groaned, swatting at him with a pillow. She rolled to her stomach and placed her hands over her ears, like she could block out the alarms. “What time is it?”

Derek looked over at their purple wall clock, another of Laura’s additions. “Two.”

“A.M.?” Laura asked, one eyebrow rising toward her hairline.

Derek reached up and pushed Laura’s side, tumbling her out of her top bunk. She twisted in midair and landed on her toes. Her eyes were rimmed in little half-moon circles, but she shook a hand through her messy black hair and stretched. “Can’t a kaiju, just once, wait until after sunrise, or breakfast to emerge from the breach?”

“Come on!” Derek said, feeling the excitement pulsing through him. He was always anxious to get back in their Jaeger. He pulled a drink out from their fridge and took a hearty gulp. “They’re calling it Knifehead, biggest category three ever!” He jumped back and forth to warm up his stiff muscles. “One more knock on the belt, Laura. Show the good citizens of Alaska, and Deaton, how good the Hale siblings really are.”

Laura wobbled toward their little bathroom, one of her hands raised in a thumbs up. “Don’t get cocky, baby bro,” she mumbled, sliding the door closed.

* * *

No one in Beacon Hills, hell probably no one in America, would have pegged Derek and Laura as star Jaeger pilots. Especially not after the suspicious fire that left them homeless orphans. They’d started applying for the Jaeger program before the fire. Their excitement driving everyone in the household insane.

Back then, every minute Derek wasn’t spending with Kate he was spending with Laura. They trained hard in the yard outside the house. This training, the roughness and synchrony of it, had felt as easy as breathing. They’d spent their childhood sparring playfully, but this kind of fight was structured and rigid. Designed to create a conversation between two bodies that would only meld if like minds existed. It took them a couple weeks but eventually they could twist, shove, hit, and move like they were extensions of each other. Laura knew how to topple his arrogance and he knew her blind spots. They could always hold themselves together in a fight, but this was different. This was mindless, exhilarating instead of exhausting.

Maybe it was his preoccupation with training that had blinded him to Kate’s intentions. Or maybe it was his own ignorance and the hormones drenching his mind. He couldn’t think passed the swing of Kate’s hips, the twist of her smile, the gentle bob of her breasts. Her words seemed to pass through him, sharp, witty words that never took root. When he thought about her, he thought about her tight body pressed against him. Her lips near his ear, her breasts pressed up against his chests, her hands dancing around his waist and then lower. After Paige he had thought he would never love again, but after Kate he knew he would never trust again.

The fire had nearly destroyed him. He’d been in school, Laura at work when it happened. Afterwards there was nothing but the skeleton of their home left. Standing outside of it in the chill evening air, Laura’s eyes flashed red for the first time. Blood red. That was when they accepted their mother’s death and Laura, pulsing with new alpha powers, had accepted her inheritance. For one horrible week they believed their sister, Cora, lost to the flames. Cora who was in so many ways still a little girl, innocent in a way Derek envied.

Kate and her family had skipped town before the police arrived, leaving not a wisp of their scent to trail. They squatted in abandoned buildings across Beacon Hills, avoiding authorities and responsibilities. Derek slept fitfully, Laura not at all. They ate sparingly. They’d been discussing the future when Derek’s cell phone rang, Cora’s number flashing across the front. She’d been in a parts shop when the fire broke out, and come home while the fire still blazed. While members of the family still cried out in anguish and reached out in hope. She’d run deep into the wood, emerging only when she heard news of Laura and Derek’s survival.

It took one month and five days for him to dredge himself out of guilt and talk to Laura. When he did it was with the new knowledge that not all monsters were as obvious and straightforward as the kaiju. “The Jaeger program,” he said, hands clenched at his sides, “if you’re still in, I’m still in.”

“I’m your Alpha now, Derek,” Laura said. “Do you think it would still work? That we would still be drift compatible?”

“You’re my sister first. That’s all we need.”

They’d set records with how fast they passed through the program. They were top in strength, agility, and mental compatibility. Thriving was the word their superior wrote on their evaluations and nothing could have been truer. In a matter of months Derek shed the last of his young softness. His bulk and physical strength leaving only the memory of skinny boyhood. His physical improvements were nothing compared to what Laura did for his mind.

The first time they drifted had been a dismal failure. Derek had resisted, unconsciously, his guilt swallowing him until he began to chase the rabbit. He’d found himself stuck in the memory of Paige. In the body of his fifteen year old self, feeling the meaningless waste of her life. Feeling the black ooze drizzle from her mouth, her nose, her wounds and her pores. She had been feverish in the end, every breath painful. Laura found him before his claws sunk into her, granting her death. She pulled him back to the present.

That night she ducked down into his bottom bunk and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. She was tiny now compared to him. “Derek, I am a mess. A complete and total basket case with enough baggage to crush anyone. You have to accept that if were going to drift. But more importantly you have to accept that I’m going to feel your guilt, as well.”

“And if you learn something that repulses you?”

Laura scrunched up her nose. “What like sex dreams? I’m the one who has to step into a guy’s mind, remember? Simple solution. Don’t think about girls while we’re drifting.” She paused and smirk. “Think about boys.”

“Laura-“

“Please, you don’t fool me baby brother.” She ducked her head against his shoulder. “Nothing you’ve ever thought could turn me away from you. Nothing.” She jumped up, shaking her body loose. “Now that we’ve talked about our feelings, let me beat you up. It’s good for the soul. What? Come on it speaks to the alpha in me.”

The second time they drifted had been tenuous but sufficient. The third like falling into a dream. They graduated the program with honors, both wearing the rubbery ranger uniform for the first time. Cora, sitting in the audience, had snickered through the ceremony. She was given a fellowship shortly afterward to work in the tech group and eventually she was the gal in the command center syncing their neural bridges every time they went out. There was a pleasant sort of safety in hearing her voice while they connected to the machine. Something they latched onto when unpleasant memories threatened to overtake their connection.

They were assigned to the Mark three Jaeger Gypsy Danger. And they were brilliant.

* * *

 

“Hey, scatterbrains, move a little quicker there. We’re twiddling our thumbs up here waiting for you to get ready for the drop.”

“This kind of thing takes time, Cora,” Laura said, fiddling with the communication button. “You think you could suit up faster than us?”

“Yes,” Cora said. “And wake up faster.”

“I am plenty awak-“

“I’m not talking about you, Derek. I’m talking about Laura. The actual coma patient that can sleep through alarms,” she dropped her voice, “even with that perfect hearing.”

Derek felt the prep team hook the spine up to his suit. The metal appendages wiggled across his spine, their sharp tips pinching against his backbone. Their uniform had two layers. A spandex like under coat with sensors and an armor outer layer that restricted movement slightly, but held all the essentials to connect to the machines anchors. Their white uniforms were loose with use and scattered with scratches but they were workable.

Laura rolled her eyes at Derek as they were handed their helmets. A whole conversation in that one movement. It’s your turn to deal with, Cora, brother. They slid their helmets on, the yellow screen slowly sliding down and stepped into the head of their Jaeger. Hooking up was elaborate work but they were patient, used to the routine by now.

“So,” Cora said through the mic, “Should I tell you about my date last night?”

“Please don’t,” Derek said, stepping into his straps one foot at a time.

“He was all gentlemanly,” Cora said. He could imagine her slouched in the control room, her hair braided, her eyes alert. The holograms around her would set a blue glow against her cheeky grin. “He loved me. Even his girlfriend loved me.”

“Cora!” Derek and Laura said in unison.

She chuckled. “Okay, okay. Prepare for the big drop, you two . . . Talking about big drop-“

Derek released the mic button cutting her off and tensed. A minute later they felt the ground beneath them fall away. The free fall was exciting now but the first time it had been terrifying. Especially to Laura who seemed to have been hiding a fear of heights since childhood. Their Jaeger head connected smoothly with the waiting body, all the wires and metal clicking together in a symphony.

The next voice that invaded their space wasn’t Cora’s.

“Prepare to initiate neural bridge, rangers,” Deaton said in his usual gruff, clipped tone.

Derek took a deep breath and hazarded a look to the right at Laura, who was smiling.

“Ready to step into my head, kid?”

“Please,” he said. “After you. Age before beauty, right?”

They both closed their eyes and waited. Derek made sure to empty his thoughts and second later he felt the tug, gentle at first then rough. The thoughts and memories, the images he began to see weren’t his own. He saw his mother, huge with pregnancy, promising a baby brother. He saw his father, a ghost of an image as fuzzy and incoherent as the word father had always been. He saw Uncle Peter, and their cousins, and their white home. He felt the surge of Alpha strength, more mental than physical. He saw himself as a baby, a shriveled defenseless thing, placed in Laura’s arms. He felt her love in that moment and her fear. He saw the first boy she had ever had a crush on and the first kiss that had sparked inside her. The memory of the fire still burned through him but he let it pass, let it slip into the next memory, the one of Cora being reunited with them. The memories began to trip around themselves, flashes, insubstantial. They folded into each other until he could differentiate himself from Laura and tuck her thoughts in beside his own.

They shuddered as they emerged together from the drift.

“Neural handshake strong and holding,” Cora said over the microphone. “Good job, guys.”

 _Of course_ , Laura thought, _we’re naturals_.

They breathed in a steady rhythm together and moved the Jaeger’s arms into motion. Putting fist to palm in their signature move. Laura moved inside of him like a pleasant river, her presence blocking out the fearful silence.

“Alright rangers,” Deaton said. “The Kaiju is a category three, name Knifehead. Your duty is to keep that thing from the shoreline and not to search it out.”

“Sir,” Laura said, confusion tinting her thoughts. “There is still a fishing vessel in that area!”

“Your job is protection, Hale. You do not risk thousand of civilian lives for the sake of a dozen. Understood?”

“Understood,” Laura said. Man, that’s harsh.

Derek looked over at her. “You know what I’m thinking?”

“I’m in your head, dumbass. I know everything your thinking.”

“Then let’s go fishing.”

* * *

Miles off the coast the captain of the Reeler shook the water from his hair and stumbled into the cabin. His little vessel and his crew were tired and fading. They were loosing the fight to this storm and for the first time in nearly thirty years of fishing he believed the ocean might take him. The waves, rising and falling nearly twenty feet every couple of minutes bounced his ship between them like a pinball. He searched the radar with frantic eyes, looking at his first mate, a younger man who had two babies at home.

“We need to get to shore,” the man said. “We should turn her around.”

“We won’t make shore,” the captain said. He pointed at the radar. “We’ll have to tuck down on this island. I don’t care if we have to run her ashore.”

On the radar the island began to move and he stepped backward. Ten miles, eight, five miles.

“How?” his first mate said, lifting his eyes from the radar. “How could it –“

The kaiju emerged from the sea like a whale breaching. Terrifying, but magnificent in its scope. The captain clutched his wheel. “Kaiju,” he breathed. He had seen the news, seen the picture, even attended the Jaeger parade in San Francisco one year, but he had never imagined a real, breathing kaiju. “Holy sh-“

The kaiju, it’s pointed skull thick and serated like the point of an arrow, came crashing through the waves toward them. The captain squeezed his eyes shut, but the impact never came. Instead he heard a crash, and felt everything shake. A jaeger had appeared from the east, from the direction of the coastline, and socked the kaiju right across the face, knocking it to the side.

In gypsy danger Derek tensed making sure to orient the jaeger’s steps away from the vessel. As Laura gripped the beast’s head he ducked his hand down and lifted the fishing vessel from the ocean. Together he and Laura pivoted and bent, placing the ship behind them and away from the danger of the ensuing attack. Only after the ship had moved a couple paces did he swing around, throwing a punch under the monster’s jaw. The kaiju screamed, reeling backward. The water cradling it’s fall.

It wasn’t down for long.

The thing came back, swinging out of the water and they began to trade blows. There was an obvious excitement to their fight but their was also skill. The kaiju wasn’t a mobile, graceful thing and gypsy danger was far from fast with her bulk. But she was strong and she did have weapons under her armor that could turn their fight from fists into victory. After a couple minutes Derek was able to grasp the beast under the jaw and Laura tucked her elbow in, loading up the plasma cannon. She counted with it.

“Three, two, one!”

The three short blasts sent the kaiju backward. Blue blood, sprayed the outside of their jaeger and with a last scream the monster disappeared under the waves.

“Nice fighting, Laura,” Derek said. He pressed the mic button and spoke to Marshall Morell. “Sir, we have completed the mission.”

“Excuse me,” Deaton said, voice deep in anger. “What are you doing away from the coastline, Gypsy Danger?”

“We intercepted the kaiju and saved everyone on that vessel,” Laura said. “Not to mention dropped the beast!”

“Return to headquarters now,” Deaton said. He cut the connection but it wasn’t hard to imagine him cursing in the control room. Cora would be hiding her laughter in the control room, her quick fingers working over the panels.

“If we hurry,” Laura said with a yawn, “we can make it back before dawn and I can just drop back into bed.”

They twisted around and began to make the journey back to shore, both wincing in unison at the idea of being chewed out by Deaton. They had only taken a few steps when the mic reconnected and Cora’s voice filled their space. “Laura! Derek! That kaiju is moving! It’s still alive! It’s-“

The kaiju hit them suddenly, knocking their jaeger back. It had surged up full force, digging its long claws into their mechanical chest. Red warning signs alighted on their screens, certain systems taking the brunt of the hit. Laura’s mind went immediately into defensive mode. She reached out a hand to hold the thing back, giving him the space to tuck his elbow in and begin loading the plasma cannon again. The beast seemed to sense their motions though. It retreated, ducked it’s head, and plunged it’s pointed skull through their shoulder.

The pain came swift and harsh. As the real arm detached from the jaeger Derek screamed in anguish. He could feel the wires sparking in his suit, the red sensors plunging through his skin. A second later his arm went numb, useless. “I’m hit,” he screamed. “I’m hit.”

The kaiju came again, ducking it’s head through their chest this time and they screamed in unison. Their screen cracked, then broke and the rain water came pouring into the helmet. Laura’s fear sparked in Derek’s mind, sharp. She turned to him with wide eyes. Green eyes. Eyes so very much like their mother’s.

“Derek, listen to me-“ A claw reached into the space and pulled her loose.

One minute she was there in his head, screaming orders, and then there was nothing. A fearful silence pervaded him. The space Laura had taken in his mind suddenly void. It took him long minutes but eventually he was able to move his control panel to his right arm and begin loading up the plasma cannon. He felt anger, beyond anger actually. He felt fury. The cannon loaded and in the last minute he placed it before the creatures throat. It discharged sending the creature back into the ocean for the last time.

* * *

It was well past dawn by the time Gypsy Danger stumbled out onto the shoreline. A morning fog, white and crystalline, collected around a small cove. A father and his son were scanning the beach for buried treasure when the jaeger materialized from the fog.

Gypsy danger had been wrecked. One arm severed, her heart nearly punctured. She stumbled a few steps out of the ocean and then fell to her knees. The force of her drop felt like a small earthquake to the citizens of that small Alaska town. It was just another Thursday morning for them. Foggy, the flurry giving way to actual snow, and the cold permanent.

Derek stumbled from the wreckage of gypsy danger. He was bleeding profusely from his shoulder, limping, and there was a ringing in his head. He couldn’t hear the words of the father and son who stood back in shock. He could only feel the emptiness in himself and what was slowly filling it. As he dropped to the ground, he felt the first flare of alpha strength surging through his bloodstream.

“No,” he breathed, but there was no stopping it now.

His vision began to blur, his consciousness slipping slowly from his grasp. He peered up through the fog at the snowflakes meandering down to earth. He thought of Cora probably frantic in that control room. He thought of Laura who, like their mother and family, would never be recovered. And as he drifted his eyes slowly began to glow red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this got long and wordy very quickly. Thank you all for the nice comments and I hope you enjoy the second chapter. And please leave me your thoughts! They help everything! The next chapter will be with our dear Stiles. (The poor thing is having such struggles this season. It's hard to swallow)


	3. Jaeger Academy - Stiles Stilinski

Kodiak Island – 2023

Stiles leaned back, letting the harness and his piloting suit pull his weight down. He knocked his arm back and then, with full force, swung it forward. The Kaiju on his screen screamed and reeled backward into a skyscraper. The building collapsed, sending a spray of dust over the screen and obscuring his range of sight. He snickered. And stepped the jaeger backward away from the dust. He waited, watching the screen with keen eyes. When the kaiju began to move he pounced, swinging another round of punches on the beast.

His simulator technician seemed to be in a foul mood today. He’d made the kaiju into some kind of mix between a shrimp, shark, and lion. It was huge, it was ugly, it was awesome. He traded a couple blows with the beast, taking his time and showing the newbies in the control room how comfortable he was in this simulator.

“Damage control, ranger. Stop showing off and take the kaiju down.”

Stiles smirked. “Ay, ay.”

He reached up and fiddled with a couple buttons on his control panel as the kaiju rolled on the ground. He’d been working through most of the night to hack the interface and switch the parameters of the simulation, and not alone. Danny, tired and bruised from his combat training, but with a strong mind for electronics had helped him.

He’d clapped him on the shoulder when they finished. “You’re totally getting the curly fries for a week for this, Danny.”

Danny smiled, his dimples making his face appear ten years younger. “Please,” he said. “There’s no way you could sneak curly fries into the Academy.”

“Yee of little faith, Danny. Yee of little faith.”

Stiles paused and then flicked the button that changed the simulation. His jaeger, built to release a string of plasma shots through both arms, suddenly began to change. He watched it on the small monitor screen. His left arm molded backward, smoothing out into thin unblemished metal.

Into a bat.

As the people in the control room began to fumble with buttons and hiss, Stiles took the stance of a batter on the plate. He twirled the bat above his shoulder, enticing the kaiju. When it charged he swung and the beast went flying, crashing down to the earth. He advanced and hit the bat over the kaiju’s skull. A spray of blood shot in the air with every hit. Most people couldn’t stand the blood, but he found it sort of beautiful. When the kaiju died it wasn’t graceful, but it was awesome.

The simulation went red, then fizzled out in static. Stiles unlocked from his harness and twirled around the room. “Stilinski hits a homerun and the crowd goes wild!”

He fisted the air as the doors hissed open and Marshall Finstock marched into the room. “In my office, Stilinski! Now!”

***

Finstock made him wait in his office while he argued with his team outside. Stiles slouched in his seat, and fiddled with the string of the cushions, then with the beads on Finstock’s desk, then with his fraying shoe laces. His jingled his foot and looked around the familiar office.

Pictures of Finstock littered everything. A lacrosse stick on the shelf sat next to a photo of the young Finstock with his old lacrosse team. A mug below that said #1 Couch in big letters and then under it. Love, Greenberg. He knew Finstock had used to coach cross country and lacrosse at a high school in Beacon Hills, California, but he was far from those roots now. Now he trained Rangers in the simulation room, teaching them how to drop thousands of pounds of kaiju flesh in minutes.

Stiles took great pride in being both his best student and the biggest thorn in his side.

“I don’t care about scheduling! I don’t care if you have to cannibalize the whole machine! Find out how Stilinski hacked our security system and find out for me by the end of today or I’m going to have you running simulator scores until your eyes bleed! Understood?”

Stiles dug out his padd from his pocket and stuck one finger to each side, stretching the screen to the size of a notepad. He typed furiously. _Jaeger Academy sucks without you. How’s life down under?_

He pressed send and imagined his best friend Scott sleeping in his bunker. Probably having sweet little dreams of his Jaeger partner, Allison, and her pretty hair.

The door swung open with a bang and Stiles jumped up in his seat, his limbs flying. He shrunk his padd and slipped it back into his pocket. “Is everything a joke to you, Stilinski?”

“No, coach,” Stiles said. “I mean, sir.”

Finstock leaned back against his desk, crossing his arms and glaring. He had one of those faces that was a mesh between hilarious and terrifying. “Who was your partner, huh?”

“Partner, cou-sir, what partner?”

“Don’t play dumb, Stilinski. I know you couldn’t hack our systems without some help. Who was it? Was it Danny, huh? It was Danny right.” Stiles opened his mouth. “No, not Danny. Greenberg wasn’t it? It was Greenberg.” Stiles nodded furiously.

“Yep, definitely Greenberg, couch.”

Finstock walked around his desk and sat down, leafing through his files. “You pull that shit again, Stilinski, and I’m going to put you on kitchen duty for the rest of your natural born life, understood.”

“Would you have preferred a lacrosse stick?”

“Stilin-“

Stiles held up his hands, slouching down. “No offense against lacrosse but I’m more of a baseball kind of guy.” He put his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “It was awesome right?”

Finstock glared and he leaned back again. “It was insubordination, Stilinski. Marshall Morell will hear of this.”

Stiles shrugged. “I dropped it right? That’s all that matters. 49th drop, 49th kill in the bag.”

Finstock raised an eyebrow. “Maybe if you were less of a sarcastic smartass you would be out there like Mccall and Argent.”

Stiles’s smile dropped off his face. He scratched a hand through his hair.

“Maybe,” he said, in a deeper, sharper tone. “Am I dismissed, sir?”

***

Danny was waiting outside his room when he got back from combat training.. “You didn’t tell, did you?”

Stiles put a hand over his heart. “I’m hurt Danny. Real hurt.”

Danny breathed a sigh of relief and slouched back against the wall. “Do you think I could borrow your access card?” he asked. “I kind of have a date.”

“With the douche twin?” Stiles rolled his eyes. “It’s not all about the body, Danny-boy. Sometimes you’ve got to look a little closer. At like . . .oh, I don’t know a 147 pound boy with pretty moles and quick fingers.”

“Please,” Danny said, flashing his dimples. “Can I have the access card?”

Stiles dug in his pocket and held it out. “Answer my question from last week. Am I attractive?”

“You’re . . .cute.”

Stiles hung his head and handed over the card. “Great, cute. You know who else was cute, Robin. It’s just going to be my lot in life isn’t it?” Danny shook his head and began to walk away. “Don’t lose that Danny-boy! I want it back first thing tomorrow morning!”

***

Stiles had joined the Jaeger Academy two years ago. Wheedled the permission from Deaton slowly and painstakingly. He was the brightest Ranger of his generation. Highest simulator score, quick learning curve on the combat training, and an innate skill with the jaegers themselves. When his insomnia hit late at night he would work on refurbishing and sketch out ideas for new Jaegers that would never be built.

Everyone knew the program was fizzling. The wall of life was being built around the Pacific, the citizens surrendering their coastline lives to live further inland. Fooling themselves into thinking that landlocked states and countries were somehow safer.

Stiles was tired of behind stuck in the Academy. Last year it had been better. Last year he’d had Scott. Puppy dog eyed, lovelorn, werewolf Scott. They’d been best friends since Stiles was twelve, and bunk mates at the academy. Scott’s hilarious attempts at hiding his lycanthropy had lasted all of 24 hours. Stiles had learned from Deaton and his own research about werewolves, especially those in the Jaeger program. Turns out werewolf minds took to drifting better than ordinary human minds. Not surprising considering they operated in packs.

With Scott, had come Erica and Boyd and Isaac and Allison. A whole group of people who had made trudging through classes, training, and simulations worthwhile. Now they were all assigned to Jaegers. Scott and Allison the star couple of the Jaeger program down in Alaska. Erica and Boyd in Russia. And Isaac with someone named Malia Tate in Japan.

 _All quiet down under. How’s Academy, really?_ Scott texted.

_Grueling, tedious, a waste of my precious life._

_Allison is making you a care package, she says hello._

Stiles rolled his eyes and fell back on his bed. He missed them all so much that it hurt sometimes.

After a few minutes he jumped up and over to his desk, activating his computer. His walls were strewn with Jaeger pictures and famous Kaiju. He’d connected each Jaeger with each of the Kaiju it had killed by pretty blue strings. Scott and Allison’s Lupus True was connected to two gnarly looking kaiju. Stiles powered up his screen and sent a stream out. It was answered in minutes.

“Stiles!” Lydia said, appearing on the camera. As always she was a beautiful image. All strawberry blonde hair, puffy lips, and big eyes. His crush on her blazed in his chest but after so many years it was easy to cull. “You’re interrupting a very important meeting.”

“Really? Between you and Jackson’s tongue?”

Lydia shrugged; all arrogance. “Like I said very important meeting. What do you want?”

“Stream me some Kaiju kills,” he said, leaning back in his seat.

“Any particular Jaeger?”

“Gypsy Danger,” Stiles said with a smile.

“Old favorite then,” Lydia said with a smirk. She pressed a few buttons and leaned closer to the screen. “Try to keep your eyes on the moves, Stiles, and not on the Hale siblings.”

Stiles rubbed his hands together. “No promises, Lydia. That Hale line is one beautiful gene pool.”

Lydia rolled her eyes again and linked him to the stream of Gypsy Danger and the Hale siblings. He knew that Gypsy Danger was lying in a rust pile now, that Laura Hale had died in the line of duty, that Derek Hale had dropped out as a Ranger, but they were still breathtaking to see.

He leaned forward and licked his lips, preparing himself for another good show.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's chapter three! I hope you all enjoy and as always comments and constructive criticism are love. 
> 
> Thank you! :)

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! Thank you for reading. I hope you all enjoyed! Please leave comments or kudos. I am going to try to update at least twice every week!!!  
> In other news I am a huge Pacific Rim fan.


End file.
